


Under Different Waters

by AgentMal



Category: Leverage, The Old Guard (Movie 2020)
Genre: Eliot Spencer doesn't know he's immortal, Flashback, Heavier in the first part, Trauma, lighter at the end
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-27
Updated: 2020-07-27
Packaged: 2021-03-04 17:35:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,903
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25430242
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AgentMal/pseuds/AgentMal
Summary: Eliot becomes an immortal and doesn't realize it. How is the Old Guard supposed to find someone who pretends to be other people all the time?
Relationships: Alec Hardison & Parker & Eliot Spencer, Alec Hardison/Parker/Eliot Spencer
Comments: 51
Kudos: 569





	Under Different Waters

Eliot Spencer's dreams often contained violence. Violence he had done, violence done to him, violence he feared he would do. Memories remixed with anxieties remixed with his training to anticipate any negative outcome. The goal of said training was to mitigate those possibilities, but they still swirled around in his head at night.

Sometimes his mind gave him high definition replays through missions he hardly remembered, or of ones that never existed set in places he'd visited but never worked in. Sometimes he saw the same moment from his past in heart-searing clarity, slowly, over and over. Usually his darkest moments. These dreams would unfold in vivid detail while he was powerless to alter what he did even when some part of him knew he was dreaming.

Sometimes going to sleep felt like surrendering to be pushed under water and held there. Some part of him would thrash sluggishly, helplessly, while the images and the feelings washed over him. While the pain ripped through him.

But after one particular close call, it changed.

It happened on a job, an explosion blew him across 30 feet and slammed his skull against cement so hard that the moment before impact he knew he was going to die. He woke in agony to Hardison half dragging, half carrying him away, tears streaking down his face, Parker yelling instructions as she cleared the way for them. By the time they had gotten him in a car, Eliot was starting to twitch his hands and feet, and already knew he was going to make it out of there. They laid him across the back and yelled over him from the front as they drove, heading for a hospital, and when he sat up Hardison nearly screamed.

"You do not get to sit up after cracking your skull like that. You need an x-ray, an MRI, some unicorn blood."

"I need to not be in a moving car. Take us back to the safehouse." Eliot had tenderly brought his hand to the back of his head, and been surprised not to feel blood. His skull was terrifyingly tender but not nearly as bad as he'd have guessed. The world swayed horribly. He lied back down.

There was more arguing across the front of the car.

"Hey!" He shouted, pretty weakly actually but they both stopped and listened, "Odds are all they would do was keep me awake and under observation, you can do that at home. If it was a severe hemorrhage I'd already be dead. If there's slow bleeding either they drain it or they don't, and I can tell you what to look for and what to do if it comes to that."

After a moment of silence, he opened his eyes (when had he closed them?) and looked where they were both staring at him.

"Alec. Parker. Just take me home."

They did. And by the time they got there Eliot had wanted to sleep like he wanted to breathe, but they were set on keeping him awake, so once they helped him lie across the couch and he took a moment, he told them the kinds of things to ask and the kinds of things to look for to monitor for bleeding and brain swelling. Hardison was already looking up even more intel. They let him stare at the ceiling and every 20 minutes would ask him a few questions, or just make conversation, just make him talk to them. Eliot would respond, then pause for long minutes, then continue responding. In this way they had a half hour's worth of conversation spaced over 6 or 7 hours.

The next time he tried to sit up they watched him like he might faint, but it was surprisingly easy. He got a bit of head rush but felt more or less okay as he swung his legs off the couch, stood, and made his way to the bathroom. There, Eliot tentatively reached for the back of his head and was shocked even more to find it firm. The skull break must be shoring itself up already. Must not have been as bad as he'd thought it was, or even as bad as he'd thought he'd felt when he touched his head in the car. He rarely prayed, would never dare to ask God for anything, but right then he got on his knees on the cheap linoleum and thanked God for letting him have a little longer with the loves of his life. For however much longer he had, he was so, so grateful.

When he came back out they handed him water and he drank. When he held a conversation at speed with them, they ordered takeout and ended up sitting around the table trading containers of szechuan and stir fry. It felt almost normal.

By the time night came again, he told them he was way out of the woods. Hardison agreed with all the hastily acquired expertise of his reading the night before, and they went to bed.

They held him, they all held each other, and their affection that night was all gentle kiss and desperate, carefully light touch. 

When he finally drifted off, it was like the dreams had been waiting for him.

It was the explosion, but he was dead and Parker and Alec were crying, wailing over him. It was that IED in Kabul, but this time Parker and Alec where there amid his fellow soldiers. It was people he didn't even recognize fighting off mercenaries in the desert. In fact, it was several different vivid flashes of each of these people from different viewpoints as they fought off nondescript American operators.

When he woke Eliot racked his brain to try to recognize them. How did he remember this? Had he been one of the operators? Was this some long dormant memory of people he'd killed waking up now that he'd been spared?

His thoughts were interrupted when he noticed an unblinking gaze. Parker was leaning over him from the chair she was perched on. Her extreme focus on him was familiar, but her worry wasn't.

"Parker. I'm alive. I'm going to live. I'm going to be just fine. It wasn't as bad as we thought."

Parker frowned. "You thought it was bad. You thought that was it."

For all that she had gaps in what she knew, she missed so little. He sighed. "Yeah. I did." He sat up gingerly and pressed his forehead to hers, "But I was wrong."

They spent the rest of the night like that, the two of them holding each other, heads pressed together, eyes shut, until they eventually slumped over together to join Hardison, who was still asleep on the other side of the bed.

From then on, Eliot's dreams were different.

He still had the same kind of dreams as before, but now there were also the dreams with _them_. Those people he saw in his sleep after the explosion. He kept seeing them. Sometimes in fights, sometimes on the run, sometimes just sleeping or having a meal. When he woke he could only remember snatches, glimpses, and still couldn't place how he knew them. They were getting more familiar with time, but he didn't know if that was him figuring out how he knew them or just seeing them so much in his sleep.

Either way, any dream with them in it had a fundamentally different quality, a different flavor, to anything else. It was still hyper clear and slow, like being underwater, but it was also lighter, brighter, absent the weight of the emotional association that was in all the rest of his dreams. It felt shallower in those water, felt more real than it possibly could be.

Some small part of him thought maybe they were people he had served with, had saved or been saved by. Why else would he dream of them getting shot dead and then standing back up to finish the fight? Getting bones broken and then miraculously healing. Other times, he knew he must have been part of the team that killed them, that seeing them come back to life was his mind wanting to rewrite what had been done to them. Perhaps what he had done to them.

The mystery of it remained, and besides the moment of unfiltered contemplation right after waking, Eliot put it out of his head.

The team bounced around more than ever after that. It had turned out the bomb that had almost gotten him was the work of a former target they had taken down. With their mandate to not kill, there were a lot of enemies behind them who would love to do them harm if given the chance. They resolved to be more cautious, to not linger, to change their aliases more often. They went to London, Prague, Mogadishu, St. Thomas, Busan, and San Salvador in rapid succession. After the scare they'd all had with Eliot, they weren't going to slow down any time soon.

* * *

Andy woke up, already feeling Booker stir behind her, his hand retreating from around her waist, Nicky and Joe mirroring them on the room's other queen.

"Fuck," said Booker, sitting up.

"Ancora e ancora," muttered Nicky.

"I saw a plane," said Joe, stalwart.

"Yeah, I think we all saw the fucking plane," Andy said, jaded, as she stretched and got up.

"He's not in Busan anymore," Booker was incredulous.

"I heard someone call him Mick," offered Nicky.

"We didn't even _make_ _it_ to Busan," Booker really couldn't believe it.

"His name isn't Mick," said Andy, still a little testy.

"I saw a flight map on a screen- it was headed to Central America. Guatemala? Maybe Honduras? I couldn't see it clearly enough," said Joe.

Booker threw his hands in the air as he spoke, resigned to the worthlessness of his contribution, "I saw the little blonde again."

Andy was already stripping as she headed toward the shower, adding acidly, "Yeah, and I saw the other one, the tall kid."

"Hardison," Booker reminded her just before the bathroom door closed behind her. It was the only name they'd heard enough among any of the three to think it was real.

Joe was shaking his head, "Portland, Prague, Mogadishu, Busan. They never stay still."

Nicky nodded in agreement, "We know they're careful, change their names, erase their presence. You know, he still hasn't realized he's one of us. And he has a team. Maybe we should again discuss just leaving them be for now. Accumulate details but not try to catch him up.

"Oh, we're going to find him, so I can kill him," said Booker.

"You just want to make the dreams stop."

"Yes, I want to make the dreams stop. They have to be driving him just as mad as us."

"Guys!"

The men paused and looked to where Nile perched at the shitty hotel room's desk and chair, hunched over her laptop.

"I saw part of his ticket, sent the flight number to Copley, and he got us a destination."

They all stared at her, silent. She was smirking.

Her laptop gave another little ping, drawing her attention back.

"Oh, _and_ a flight manifest. So we can figure out the names they'll be using when they land. He says our new flight leaves in 8 hours."

They all groan. They can hear Andy's resigned laughing through the door.

**Author's Note:**

> Update: Wow! This work was truly written as a one-shot, really only written because I was shocked to find no one else had written something in this crossover yet. I never expected this kind of feedback, which is blowing me away. Due to popular demand there will now most definitely be more. Thank you all so much for your encouragement and your kudos. 
> 
> If anyone might be interested in being a beta or even just cheerleader for the continuation, or just to trade meta and feels, come say hi on [tumblr](https://rainonsand.tumblr.com/).


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